Please listen to these English spoken by 4 Japanese English learners

[tradewind]

And please give honest opinions on these speakers.

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from
the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue
cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small
plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these
things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at
the train station.

http://vipquality.orz.hm/uploader/file/OTL3747.orz_Y3miZLV7eUpJwORcON73/OTL3747.orz

http://vipquality.orz.hm/uploader/file/OTL3750.mp3_IXi3rNFVo6InQCAvu9we/OTL3750.mp3

http://vipquality.orz.hm/uploader/file/OTL3751.orz_akOiq7lfmXXtvLSjuUZg/OTL3751.orz

http://vipquality.orz.hm/uploader/file/OTL3752.mp3_ah3pw6QDcNdpT570l6Ov/OTL3752.mp3

[anjusan]

If you had not witten out the dialogue I would not have been able to understand the first person... the second one is by far the best... the third needs to enunciate a little more... and the fourth person was almost as good as the second one...

This is just my personal opinion though... if I were giving grades I would give the following:

1st - D
2nd - A+
3rd - C
4th - B

Is that what you wanted to know or did you want more specific answers?

I asked my son if he could understand number one and he thought the guy was speaking in a foreign language...

[tradewind]

Anju-san, thank you for your quick reply.
Acutually, there is one more sound spoken #1!
How about this?

http://vipquality.orz.hm/uploader/file/OTL3727.orz_scMWCPccjNpNUJAwuhnn/OTL3727.orz

[anjusan]

Line by line:

Please call Stella.
Good enunciation...

Ask her to bring these things with her from the store.
Try to pronounce the word 'these' with less of a 'z' sound... try putting the tongue more against the front teeth to make a proper 'th' sound. The word 'things' again try to make an effort to make 'th' sound... instead of sounding like 'sing' 'thing'...

Six spoons of fresh snow peas.
you put an extra word in there... you said six spoons of 'the' fresh snow peas
and when you said 'the' it was again more of a 'z' sound

Five thick slabs of blue cheese.
Really try to ennunciate the 'v' in 'five'... again you must work on the 'th' in 'thick' sounds more like the word 'six'

Is this helping would you like me to continue?

[lastmagi]

Better than a lot of Japanese singers I've heard!

Here are my comments. Note that I'm by no means trained in English teaching, so take my comments with a grain of salt. Also, I've been trained with an American ear, not British or Australian, so I might have some inadvertent biases towards how some things should sound.

1st speaker

Well, he hesitated a lot before each sentence, but I do that sometimes too, and he got better with eliminating the "Ah"s as he got more into the exercise.

The "these" of "ask her to bring these things" was a bit on the "breathy" and nasal side, and needed a little bit more "hardening," which can probably be corrected by biting down on the tongue just a tiny little more and speaking not from the top of the throat.

The "her" was too close to Japanese phonetics, sounding more like "Haa" than "her". Make him raise the tongue up a little more.

snow peas - snow kept sounding like small, if I hadn't looked at the words. The o should not be like the o in orange, but the o in boat.

"Five thick slabs" - again, the "th" sound was not hard enough, sounding almost like an "s" sound. I know Japanese interchange "th" for "s" when using foreign words, but this should be avoided when speaking actual English (ie Smith in Katakana is SU MI SU).

"blue cheese" - Again, without the words, I mistook it as grilled cheese. He should pronounce the l more clearly so it won't be mistaken for r.

"We also need" - We sounded like they, for some reason. the e sound in we should sound like the e in need, not the a in day.

"Three red bags" - again, see above comments for th sounds

"We will go meet her" - He needs to try not to slur these words together. Of course, most American teenagers slur words together anyway!

2nd speaker

my comments are a little more nitpicky, but that's because I think he's at a comfortable level to fine-tune his pronunciation.

"bring" was a little slurred, and it was hard to catch the b.

her brother bob - the syllables in "her brother bob" were all equal in stress; the first and third syllable should be unstressed, and the second and fourth stressed.

"We also need a small" - the syllables in "also need a" were of the same tone.

three red bags - th sounded a little breathy.



I'd love to try to correct the last two speakers, but I really have to go get my schoolwork done, so I'll get around to them some other time. Sorry if some of what I said were confusing or plain wrong, I typed out parts of it in a hurry...

I'm curious, are these your students? What level are they, as far as years spent learning? Although everyone needs room for improvement, I think they're well on their way!

[zakkie13901]

listen to all those pple from different places trying to enunciate the same paragraph!! http://accent.gmu.edu/

[anjusan]

listen to all those pple from different places trying to enunciate the same paragraph!! http://accent.gmu.edu/
Very interesting... thank you for sharing the main site with us.:cool:

[tradewind]

http://vipquality.orz.hm/uploader/file/OTL3820.orz_9UUPOqUSq2RAKqVHIDIe/OTL3820.orz

Here's new recording......

[anjusan]

okay, IMHO, I would say focus on improving the 'th' especially in the word 'thick' of 'five thick slabs of blue cheese'

[tradewind]

I practiced pronunciations a little bit. But I’m still having a hard time on them.
I figured that it takes times.....
This is a new sound file. Any comments are welcome.

http://vipquality.orz.hm/uploader/file/OTL4020.orz_Lb4V9MbGCS9QrGLnw0Vi/OTL4020.orz

[WHEATTHlNS]

The last one has a problem with the "TH" sound - as others have noted. Takes awhile to get used to (I guess).